


Silicon Gateway

by Trell (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Biopunk, Cybernetics, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Friendship/Love, M/M, Teenagers, Transhumanism, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"They want to </i>cut open your head!<i>" Dean explodes, and, yeah, definitely anger.</i></p><p><i>"That's hardly all it is! They want to implant the latest chip they've developed, Dean. Imagine what I could do—imagine how I could think!" Castiel babbles, all the things he's been churning over in his head since he got the letter this morning coming out of his mouth in a tangle. "You've seen Danny, at school, he's got the Mark 7, he's doing the kind of math I couldn't figure out in a year in </i>minutes—<i>"</i></p><p>In which Castiel gets the offer, and Dean might be losing his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silicon Gateway

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1/4.

It's well past curfew when Dean sneaks out, which means copbots are fucking _everywhere_ , and also that they can not only fine him but detain him, too.

Which just makes it more exciting, really.

He pushes up his window while the scanner is sweeping over a different part of the apartment building and shimmies out onto the fire escape. His feet land softly on the mesh, rubber placed on metal with the utmost caution to keep from clanging and alerting the sound sensor; and then he's scurrying down the stairs, expertly toeing only the sides, under the railing, where there's no chance of loose metal that'll make noise.

He thinks he just misses the scanner swinging back over across their side of the apartment complex as he's swinging down from the ladder that ends the fire escape, hanging three meters meters over the concrete below.

He waits to stop swinging, takes a breath, and lets go.

One dizzying moment in the air, and then his feet are hitting the ground, numbing slightly from the impact. The curfew sensor above doesn't shriek, and the wall it's imbedded in doesn't flash angry red or blat the recorded warning or call the police.

Dean grins, and sets off along the alleyway, still shiny-wet from the earlier rain.

Cas's apartment complex is three blocks away, and there's probably at least six copbots between here and there. Dean figures he can make it; and if he can't, well, he's a juvenile. What's another delinquency mark on what'll be a closed record?

* * *

Castiel is smoothing his fingers over the papers lying on his desk—which is positioned right under his bed and pushed up against the window, because his room is really a glorified box—for the dozenth time when there's a rap on the dark glass.

It makes him start, jerking his hand away from the grooves of the official seal stamped into the paper (high quality, thick; only the government uses this kind, mimicking parchment). No one should be outside at this hour, which means—

Castiel stands, reaches across his desk, and pulls open the window, letting cold night air flood into the room. It's going to get arctic in here in seconds. "Dean."

"Hey, Cas." Dean's head pops over the sill, grinning ear-to-ear. Of course he is, Castiel thinks, exasperated: only Dean could possibly get such a thrill out of breaking the law just so he can spend time with his friend, despite the fact that they're going to see each other in class tomorrow.

"What are you doing out?" Castiel hisses, accusatory, but holds out an arm for Dean to grab and pull himself in, anyway. As Dean hauls himself up with a grunt, he berates, "Do you know how many regulations you're breaking? They could write you up for hundreds—"

"But they won't, right, 'cause you're not gonna tell on me?" Dean gets half-way through the window, stomach on Castiel's desk, and lets go of his arm in favor of grasping the table edge to pull himself all the way in. Castiel grabs the government papers out of the way, so they don't get crumpled _(so Dean doesn't see them)._

He stuffs them into a drawer while Dean twists and huffs his way through the window.

Once Dean's in, turning awkwardly in the cramped space between Castiel's desk and the bottom of the bed, bumping his desk lamp askew in the process, Castiel leans past him to shut the window.

He breathes out. No alarms, but he should know better than to be surprised.

At least when Dean breaks the law he's good at not getting caught.

"What are you even here for?" Castiel droops into his rolling chair and moves back a little to give Dean room; Dean slides off his desk, jacket zipper catching against it, and leans back.

"Bored," he says, informatively, and shrugs. He's got his finest charmer smile on, the kind that makes most people go wobbly and makes Castiel suspect he's planning something.

"You were bored," Castiel repeats, crossing his arms, "so you—"

"—broke the law, had an exciting night, came over here to bother you. Yeah, basically." Again with the thousand-watt smile.

Castiel kicks him in the shin. "You're reckless."

"I'm adventurous, is what I am. Dashing and and exciting and all manner of handsome."

"Dashing and handsome," Castiel tells him, not taken in in the slightest, "mean the same thing."

"I'm good enough for both," Dean informs him, and flops down to sit under Castiel's desk, instead, stretching his legs out so the bottoms of his shoes are up against the wheels of Castiel's chair. Then he looks up, crooking a brow, and turns this argument right around on Castiel: "Why are you still up, huh? The current sleep schedule mandate is, like, eleven."

"Ten-thirty, actually," Castiel says, dryly. "They changed them a week ago." The sleep schedules adjust slightly every few weeks, little by little, to accommodate for the seasonal hours of daylight.

"See what I mean? You're so goody-goody that you actually pay attention to those things. Usually you'd be following the rules to the letter. So what's up?" Dean smirks, triumphant.

"I couldn't sleep," Castiel admits.

"Why?" Dean pries. Castiel wonders if he's just that transparent, or if Dean's question is innocuous.

Dean toes at the hem of his jeans, brushing Castiel's bared ankle with the edge of his shoe. It's wet, and makes him shiver. "Ugh, Dean," he complains.

"C'mon," Dean says, "tell me!" And pokes at Castiel's ankle again, pestering. Castiel scoots his chair the short distance back to the wall behind him, and draws his feet up onto his chair to get away, wrapping his arms around his knees. Dean whines, "C'mon, man. I know somethin' has to be goin' on."

Castiel looks down at him, sprawled languidly to take up most of the small space they're in, and deliberates, chewing his lip out of nervous habit.

"Caaas."

"Okay," Castiel says, abruptly. He shouldn't be doing this, these things are supposed to be confidential—and add that to the list of things he's not supposed to be doing tonight that he is anyway, why don't you—and it makes the skin on the back of his neck prickle with anxiety.

He stands and walks over to the foot-wide drawer taking up the space between the left side of his desk and the wall, into which he'd stuffed the papers, and takes them carefully out.

"What's that?" Dean says, but his voice isn't so playful anymore. Now it's cautious, probably because he's already caught sight of the parchment-like paper and the raised seal in the shape of an eagle with spread wings.

"They . . ." Castiel trails off. He still can't say it, so he just thrusts the papers jerkily towards Dean. Dean takes them, brows drawn together, and Castiel sort of folds (collapses) back into his chair.

The light-headedness is probably psychosomatic.

Dean's got a frown on his face the moment he starts reading, eyes flicking side to side and he scans the paper. "What," he says. "What, Cas."

"What _what,_ Dean?" Castiel says. He's too tired for this. He's too wired to be tired, actually, but the fatigue is starting to creep in, anyway. He only has three coffee chits left for the rest of this week, though, what with drinking more than he usually does while he was studying for that exam on Wednesday, so he doesn't creep out to the dispensary to get some.

"You're not seriously considering this." Dean's voice is rough, and Castiel can't quite place the emotion in it. Disapproval? Concern? Anger? All of them?

"Dean, I—" Castiel swallows, wrings his hands together. "Dean, it's an amazing opportunity."

"They want to _cut open your head!_ " Dean explodes, and, yeah, definitely anger.

"That's hardly all it is! They want to implant the latest chip they've developed, Dean. Imagine what I could do—imagine how I could think!" Castiel babbles, all the things he's been churning over in his head since he got the letter this morning coming out of his mouth in a tangle. "You've seen Danny, at school, he's got the Mark 7, he's doing the kind of math I couldn't figure out in a year in _minutes—_ "

"Most people do that by going to college, Cas," Dean growls. He looks like he's about to crumple the paper, so Castiel falls forward out of his chair and snatches out of his hands, clutching the sheaf protectively to his chest. "They don't go into surgery to get metal crammed in their brain!"

"It's not metal, it's silicon—"

"—whatever! Cas, you can't!" And Dean's tone is suddenly pleading. "Listen to me, man, don't do this."

"It would increase my intelligence exponentially. My memory tenfold." Castiel steps back next to his chair, presses his shoulder blades back against the wall opposite Dean and the window.

"Yeah, but, man, you said it yourself. Danny, I mean. You know how zoned out he gets—how he doesn't really laugh anymore, just gives that weird fucking smile and talks about stuff we don't understand."

"But _I_ could _understand,_ " Castiel says, frustrated, a little louder than he intends.

Because of course he's afraid of what it could do to him, that's why he's up and not happily asleep right now, after all. He's afraid of the personality shift implanted individuals get, and the dangerous side effects, from migraines to seizures to a dozen things he doesn't even want to contemplate.

But he could understand— _really_ understand. His whole life he's felt like when he learns he's only getting a little corner of the big picture, just an inkling of everything that lies under the surface of each subject, no longer how in-depth and dissecting the study. With the implant, he could see and incorporate every fact, understand everything from the largest scale down to the most microscopic.

He doesn't know how to explain the yearning to know, the itch to do more than just skim the surface, to Dean.

Dean doesn't even like showing up to class, much less exploring subjects in detail.

"What's there to understand," Dean says, and sits forward. "Forgetting the creepy robotifying for a minute, this could _seriously_ fuck you up! Like one in a dozen of the people that get implanted end up dead within a year!"

"One in fifteen," Castiel says, woodenly. He'd looked up the numbers earlier, after the first ten times he read over the letter. "Those are good odds, medically speaking. The odds for not rejecting a kidney are worse than that."

"Yeah, except those odds would be _zero_ percent if you didn't do it!" Dean smacks the palm of his hand against his knee. The motion makes Castiel jump: he really is wired.

"Dean," he starts, and he wants to explain how important the thought of knowing and seeing the universe as it is to him, he does, but he doesn't. Dean would probably scoff, or, worse, laugh at him. "I think I have to do this," he says instead, quietly.

"Shit," Dean says, staring up at him, hand coming up to rub over his lips. "Shit, you're serious about this."

"Yes." He can barely hear his own voice when he says it. It's the first time he's actually admitted it to himself, the inevitability of his accepting the offer. Dean's arguments make sense—he's made them to himself already, after all, of course they make sense—but in the end he has to do this, has to sign his name and accept.

"Fuck me," Dean swears, and closes his eyes, pressing his hand over his entire face. Muffled, he groans, "You're an idiot, Cas."

"I'm not." And he's annoyed, now. "One person in multiple thousands gets this offer, first by physical compatibility and then by achievement. And they chose _me._ "

"Yeah, they chose you. Chose you to either turn you into a freak or get you killed. Awesome." Dean takes his hand away, eyes opening and meeting Castiel's, mouth a flat line.

Castiel lets himself slide down the wall to sit heavily on his knees, lowering himself to Dean's level, and says, softly, "It's my life, Dean. Mine, not yours."

The heat in Dean's eyes as he surges forward to grab Castiel by the shoulders startles him. "Oh, no," Dean says, fingers gripping tightly at him as Castiel shrinks into himself, "oh, no, you don't. You're my friend, Cas, shit, my best friend, maybe my only real friend that matters, and if something happens to you—it's not just you that gets hurt. It's me, too, and your dad, hell, even Sam."

Castiel feels sick to his stomach. All he can get out is a raspy, "Dean." Like it's the only word he knows. It makes him sound like an idiot.

"Don't do it," Dean repeats, holding his gaze, hands still tight on Castiel's shoulders. "Please, man, don't do it."

"I have to," Castiel whispers, and feels tears stinging at his eyes. He blinks, hard, trying to get them to go away, because he's not going to cry, not now, not in front of Dean. "I have to."

The way the intense expression on Dean's face slips into hurt makes guilt wash over him, acidic, even as Dean pulls him forward into an unexpected, bone-crushing hug.

He ends up with his face mashed awkwardly against Dean's shoulder. He's enveloped by Dean's arms, his own hands clasped tightly against his chest, eyes swimming with the tears he's trying to hold back, and he's surprised to feel Dean shake against him like he's maybe fighting down a sob of his own.

God save them: Dean Winchester has feelings other than masculine bravado after all.

"Fuck you," Dean says, above him, bitterly, voice tight. "Jesus. Fuck you, Cas."

"I'm sorry," Castiel mumbles, brokenly. Dean doesn't let go.

It isn't enough for either of them. 

* * *

Dean stays the night, because one adrenaline-filled run through the alleyways is enough for a twenty-four hour period. Castiel makes no move to kick him out, just throws an extra blanket and pillow down from his bed when he eventually squeezes up the ladder into the bunk. Dean sleeps on the floor, part-way under Cas's desk.

Or tries to sleep, anyway. Mostly he listens to Cas breathing and stares at the the bottom of the mattress above him. It's cold, though that's not what keeps him awake.

He drops into a light doze towards morning, only to snap out of it when the alarm on Castiel's desk shrieks. Above him, Cas mumbles, "Turn it off," and makes to get out of bed while Dean fumbles to shut off the persistent beeping.

By the dark bags under his eyes, Dean guesses he didn't do much resting, either. They probably got four hours between the two of them, at best. 

Cas blinks blearily at him once he's gotten down to the floor, and shambles over to the drawer by his desk to retrieve the shiny black coffee chits. 

He holds one out to Dean with a bland look and says, firmly, "You owe me," before turning to step out of the room, pajama bottoms dragging on the cheap mat-like carpet. (The door swings out, thank god, or getting out one after another would be a very intimate experience.)

Dean, feeling very rumpled in two-day old clothes, follows Cas out and down the dark hallway. The apartment is small—they're all small, and more or less identical to each other, though the template of the one Dean lives in is a little different, meant to accommodate a family with two children rather than one—and the only doors in the hall are the one into the bathroom, Cas's room, and the room belonging to Cas's dad, as well as a closet. 

They go out through the small entry hall, differing from the one in Dean's house only because instead of a couch and a tv set stacked with various consoles the place is filled with boxes and boxes of book-flimsies. (Cas and his dad are fucking hoarders, in Dean's professional opinion. They've got flimsies stacked in the linen closet, for fuck's sake.)

Cas pauses to toe on slippers and frown disapprovingly at Dean tromping around inside the house in his outdoor shoes, but doesn't say anything.

He's even more reticent than usual this morning, and Dean doesn't blame him. Despair and anger of last night flare in Dean again, threatening to consume him if he doesn't try to think about something else. 

He focuses on not tripping down the stairs as he follows Cas down through the dim stairwell to the dispensary that serves all the apartments on the top three floors, instead. 

The dispensary's still pretty empty, but the lights are on here, starkly fluorescent. Only other school kids are down this early, the assorted jobs in the city mostly don't start for another hour, as per regulation, so they least don't have to wait in line as they make it to the main dispenser. 

Cas puts in his coffee chit and punches the necessary buttons, grabbing a styrofoam cup from a nearby stack and sticking it under the liquid output nozzle.

It spits out a bubble of brown gunk, which makes Cas wrinkle his nose and Dean go "Yuck," and then whirs loudly and dribbles out Castiel's allotted six ounces. 

Dean waits for the machine to cough out his own coffee while Cas wanders to one of the plastic-top round tables by the wide window. A few of the others are taken, though most of the other kids just grab their food and whatever else and head back up to their apartments.

The machine slobbers out the last of his coffee, steaming, and quiets.

Six ounces. Ugh. It should at least be _eight._

Cas is carefully looking out the window instead of at him when Dean sits down across from him, fingers wrapped around his cup and chewing his lip again. 

Dean sighs, because he hates this, hates everything about it, and the tension isn't helping. "Cas," he says. "You're gonna bite through to blood if you keep doin' that."

Castiel's eyes snap back to his, and he stops worrying at his lip, at least, though he shifts uncomfortably. "I'm sor—" he starts, but Dean cuts him off.

"Look," he tells Cas, "I think we're both clear on how I feel about this. But us doin' this thing where we stare awkwardly at everything in the room but each other isn't gonna help."

"What would help?" Castiel takes a gulp of his coffee, apparently without thinking, because he immediately yelps. Stuff tastes like crap, but it's still hot.

Dean winces sympathetically while Cas chokes and just barely manages not to spit all over the table. Once he's swallowed, panting, Dean says, plainly, "Nothin', Cas. Not _doin'_ it would help, is what, but you already made up your mind."

"I did," Cas agrees. He blows on his coffee before sipping cautiously at it, this time, the steam rolling off and dissipating. "I think this is important."

"I'm not going to pretend to get why you do." Dean risks a sip of his own coffee, finds it just cool enough to down a little bit at a time. "But I guess—I guess it's stressful enough already. I'm not gonna antagonize you any more than I have to." He grins, though he doesn't really feel like smiling. "Unless there's any chance me bein' as annoying as possible would change anything."

Castiel shakes his head, but his mouth pulls up a little at the edge, which is better than nothing.

They sit in silence for a while, alternately sipping their coffee and staring out the window—it's pre-dawn out, just light enough to start to see the outlines of the dark clouds blanketing the sky—and the windows of the apartment complex across the empty lot outside are dark save for the few into dispensaries like this one.

The city's at its most minimal energy use right now, electricity traded for the water being on. It'll be off again in about an hour and a half, giving the people that have to go to work just enough time to do things like brush their teeth (no chit required for the tap, hence the water use being limited) and use their shower chits to jump in for a quick one.

Eventually, Cas sighs and says, "Do you want me to go get breakfast chits? I don't usually—I usually eat later." An apologetic shrug. 

Dean knows all about Cas's habit of eating breakfast as a late-night snack, though, despite the fact that that's totally not regulation, either. "Nah, man," he says, and finishes off his coffee. "I'll pay you back for the coffee."

"You can go shower, so long as you pay me back for that, too." Castiel eyes him. "Did you even shower yesterday?"

"Uh," Dean says. "No." He'd been too busy sneaking out to deal with mundane things like basic hygiene.

What can he say? The life of excitement isn't for those who want to keep clean.

"Go on, then." Castiel waves a hand at him; he's still nursing his coffee, making those six ounces last as long as they can be made to. "I'll be up in a minute."

It feels like a sort of peace gesture, even though Cas is shooing him away. "Okay," Dean says, and aims before tossing his styrofoam cup across the room.

It bounces off the corner of the trash chute, which makes Cas snort. Dean curses.

He does go over to actually pick it up and throw it in the chute, though, his own peace gesture towards Cas, who makes a 'you-failed', sad-trombone sort of noise with his mouth and raises his eyebrows in expectation.

* * *

By the time Castiel gets out of the shower himself Dean's managed to run back to his apartment complex and back, returning dressed (rather haphazardly) in his uniform and with his bag slung over his shoulder, unzipped. His hair's still wet, and he's breathing a little hard, and Castiel mutters "You'll catch a cold," out of habit as he heads into his room to change. 

Dean's leaning back against the wall and looking bored when Castiel stumbles out dressed, but then focuses on him and grins. Castiel says, "What?" and frowns a little.

Dean says, "Your tie," and walks over to fix it for him, because Castiel's put it on backwards again.

"I'm bad this," Castiel confesses, like Dean hasn't done this half a dozen times before, out in the street or even when they're almost at the school doors. 

Dean just snorts and says, "I know, genius. Maybe that chip'll make you at least be able to put your tie on right, huh?"

Castiel frowns out of unhappiness rather than consternation, that time, which makes Dean cringe. "Too soon?" he asks.

"A little," Castiel agrees, as Dean tucks his tie into his sweater and turns around to go.

Castiel reaches forward to zip Dean's bag closed in return, grabs his long coat off the rack by the door, and follows him out. 

* * *

Outside is dank and has both of them shivering immediately. Cas sort of burrows into his trench coat as they head for the nearest subway entrance, and Dean just tugs his jacket closer around himself.

Holographic advertisements—Dean thinks, not for the first time, that there's some kind of vast irony in the fact that the city allows energy to be used on companies trying to run credit scams, but not on lighting residential areas in the morning—flock to them in the street. Some of them just hover brightly until waved off, while others jabber too-loud recordings; some even do cursory scans of their ID cards and use their names to address them, pronouncing them with awkward electronic syllables. ( _CAS-TEEL,_ one of the gaudier ones insists, _YOU MADE [[ACCESS BLOCKED]] UNITED BANK CREDITS LAST YEAR!_.)

There's even more waiting for them as they merge with the thin crowds heading down into the subway, and Dean ends up waving his hands at them like he's fighting off a swarm of mosquitoes. 

At least most of them don't flash anymore, ever since someone had an epileptic seizure after being chased down the street by an iridescent animated dinosaur selling flavorings for dispenser protein.

They join the lines at the turnstiles and sidle through, hovering their ID cards over the sensors, step through the metal detectors just beyond (an elderly female security flanked by a copbot regards them with a resigned sort of suspicion, like she distrusts teenagers on principle) and head towards where still more transparent figures hawk wares by the lines.

It's even colder in the subway than it is in the street, considering that there's no sunlight even in the daytime, and the city doesn't deem it necessary to run the heat even though they'll run the commercial projectors. They huddle next to each other while they wait for the train to arrive, together with a group of girls looking equally miserable and mostly entertaining themselves by flipping through channels on their wrist drives' limited CyNet connection.

"I hate the winter," Castiel grits.

In attempt to distract, Dean nudges him in the side and says, "Think any of them are cute?" before nodding towards the girls. He's not really interested himself, just fishing for a reaction.

Cas gives him an odd look, glances around him towards the girls, and says, dispassionately, "No."

The train arrives, and they shuffle on, tugging facemasks out of their bags and pulling them on. (They always have them, given that nanite contaminations and air quality warnings happen practically every other day, but they work just as well against sneezes.)

Normally, Dean wouldn't bother—he has an immune system of steel, probably because he's basically godlike anyway, right—but Cas has been badgering him for so long about taking precautions during exam season that he does it, anyway. 

He almost thinks they're going to make it to school without bringing up the implantation again when Cas suddenly says (as they cling to the ceiling bars, not wanting to sit on the plastic seats lest they _freeze_ to the damn things), "I'll be able to access the global CyNet with my brain. From anywhere. Even when the local extranet is down."

"That's great," Dean says, tonelessly. "And what you're gonna do for them in return, that doesn't bother you?"

"It's no different from lending your computer's processing power to one at a remote location so it can do more work." It's even harder to read Cas's expression with the blue facemask in the way. "It's no different than civic service volunteering."

"Except they're using your _brain_ to shunt data around. There's a big difference," Dean protests. The subway lurches, and he redoubles his grip. "They're making you think for them and they're, like, borrowing pieces of your head."

"A small price to pay," Castiel intones, and Dean wonders anew just what Cas is so intent on getting out of this.

He tries to not to think of Danny, sitting there staring off into space with glassy eyes and speaking in what might as well be tongues. 

Maybe it'll be different, with Cas. Reactions to the implantations are supposed to be completely idiosyncratic, right?

As the subway pauses at a station and more students and men and women heading to work early get on, Cas speaks again. "If you're worried I won't be your friend anymore because of this, Dean, I assure you, that won't happen."

"How do ya know?" Dean doesn't mean to make the question so brash and pessimistic, but he can't stop himself. "How d'you know you're not gonna end up more interested in being one with the CyNet, or whatever, than hanging out with me?"

Castiel blinks at him over the edge of his facemask, as if the very concept of the question is unfeasible. "I just know."

The words have a scary kind of conviction, almost enough that Dean can believe him, but he knows better. Cas has always been an abstracted, intense-focus sort of personality, and this'll be no different: he'll be lost to the implant, drawn in, and there won't be any going back.

* * *

As the subway hums on towards their stop on magnetic rails, Castiel wonders, distantly, if he'll still want to kiss his best friend after they put in the chip.

He thinks maybe forgetting that desire wouldn't be such a bad thing. 

Anything ought to be better than wanting something he can never have.

* * *

The projector over the school entrance is displaying the latest environmental survey statistics as they climb the steps into the building. The ozone over Brazil is still disintegrating, which isn't a surprise, and there's a massive snowstorm headed for New York, which isn't either, and the crater that used to be Chicago still glows in the dark. (Metaphorically speaking, anyway.)

Dean cranes back as they pass through the doors, just enough to see the projection blink over to the next informative slide. One of the Florida Protected Greenhouse Chains—the one growing oranges—has been hit by a new permutation of fungus. 100% decay projected by the end of the week.

Dean's never had an orange in his life, so he can't say he cares too much, but he'd always sort of hoped to someday try one. He supposes there won't be a chance, now.

Whatever.

Beside him, Castiel says, "With people like us they'll be better able to predict which fungi will mutate next. Maybe with enough of us they can stop the vegetative species loss altogether."

Dean actually snorts at that (and frowns inwardly at 'people like us'), because he's pretty sure that would take more than a bunch of genius kids. "I don't think that's gonna happen, Cas."

(Really, _people like us?_ It's like he's already erecting a divide between them, an arbitrary distinction.)

"It certainly won't happen if we don't try." 

They turn into the rooms with the lockers and shelves, deposit their coats. Dean takes his tablet and stylus out of his bag; Cas does, too, along with an electronic textbook display page. The copbot monitoring the room stares at them impassively and flicks a head-to-toe scan over both of them.

They have different classes this morning, and Castiel stops just before they split in the hallway, biting at his lip again. "You won't tell anyone?" he asks, cautiously meeting Dean's eyes. "You're not even—you're not even supposed to know."

Dean has to force down a physical shudder at the thought of Castiel doing this without telling anyone, of maybe losing him completely without warning. Aloud, he says, "Of course not."

He'd never do anything to jeopardize Cas's well-being, after all, nor his ambitions. Between the two of them, Cas is the one that's going to go far, end up in high-level civic service or maybe making big bucks up at the glittering towers of the city's corporate center. Maybe he'll even get out of the zones, and not have to live with constant air quality warnings and minimal dispenser rationing.

Cas is smart and he follows the rules (except when he doesn't), and Dean isn't and doesn't (except when he does, when Cas asks). He'll always lie and cheat and take the fall for both of them, if he has to. 

"Thank you," Cas says. The smile he gives is sickly.

Dean just nods, and turns away to go.

**Author's Note:**

> (To be continued.)


End file.
